For all the talk of science, it's looking more and more like Americans are much more likely to follow their politics when it comes to covid.
That explains why, in a Morning Consult poll conducted in mid-January, the number of young people (who are least likely to experience serious health consequences from a coronavirus infection) who said they were "very worried" about getting sick from covid-19 was 50 percent higher than those over age 65 (the most at-risk population segment).
The percentage of older folks who said they were "not at all" worried was 40 percent lower than those under age 35. Perhaps most ironic of all, vaccinated adults were half-again more likely to say they were "very" or "somewhat" concerned about the delta and omicron variants than unvaccinated adults.
These irrational attitudes are directly related to one of the poll's most conclusive findings: When it comes to the pandemic, partisanship figures more prominently than fact.
For example, 83 percent of Democrats expressed concern about their children getting sick from covid-19 while attending school in person. But omicron presents little risk to children (far less than a car ride), while closed schools cause demonstrable damage--and virtually no evidence exists that shutting down schools has led to fewer covid cases anywhere.
I've long believed that had the coronavirus pandemic occurred five or 10 years earlier, everything about it would look completely different. Its timing--during a tumultuous and uber-polarized presidential election campaign--positioned it for gross politicization from the start.
At first, nobody knew much about the emerging covid situation. Two years later, there's an ocean of data, but it still routinely gets swamped by recurring tidal waves of dysfunctional partisan disconnect.
The initial Democrat pat responses to the pandemic, including shutdowns, lockdowns and mask mandates, became symbolic of progressive identity. And at that level, party vanity still prevails, even though the result of those policies have inadvertently made former president Trump's words prophetic when he warned that the cure shouldn't be worse than the disease.
We now have empirical evidence of the cost of pandemic disruptions, which include record-high overdose deaths, all-time homicide records in at least a dozen major cities (and a stark increase in violent crime overall across the nation), alarming spikes in high-blood-pressure cases, a skyrocketing rise in domestic violence and yet untold harm on multiple fronts to school-age children.
Prior to covid, proportionality was a prime guiding principle for ethical public-health responses. Similar to the Hippocratic Oath of "first, do no harm," the best government policy must first make sure that any intervention efforts are proportionate to the risk.
The election frenzy, plus an unhealthy (some could argue maniacal) obsession with being anti-Trump, led Democrats to pursue policies that were wholly disproportionate.
Children are 10 times more likely to be killed in an automobile accident than by contracting covid, and yet even the loopiest liberal Democratic lawmaker would never sign on to the government disallowing kids in their parents' cars.
Nevertheless, many Democrats not only bought into school closings wholesale, but also became quick to brazenly shame and shout down their more moderate brethren who dared question possible downsides for kids and families.
The toll on children from a learning-loss standpoint during the pandemic cannot be overestimated, especially on what are considered the most vulnerable among us. It's a full-blown academic achievement crisis and a national emergency in children's mental health. Among 12-to-17-year-old girls, suspected suicide attempts resulting in emergency-room visits increased by 51 percent from 2019 to 2021.
Shootings at school have also surged to record levels; a Washington Post tally showed a 56 percent increase in 2021 compared to 2019.
Most troubling is the fact that the worst effects of school closings have fallen on children of color in high-poverty schools--a demographic Democrats claim to protect most.
Still, a strong majority of Democrats surveyed (65 percent) support transitioning more students to online learning from in-person school, despite failure-level performance evidence on large-scale remote learning. An almost equal majority of Republicans (61 percent) oppose the idea.
The unavoidable truth is that forcing children to suffer disproportionately is the price many in Democratic leadership are still willing to pay in the name of reducing covid risk.
That's in diametric opposition to millions of parents in their party, who initially expressed a willingness to short-term sacrifice in the spirit of a stop-gap measure. Then even liberal parents began complaining in earnest as they witnessed the deterioration of education with their own children. When their valid objections started getting met with insulting vitriol likening them to "Trumpers," things hit the fan.
It's a parent's job to put their children's interests first, and many are realizing that's not at all been the priority for Democratic progressives where covid is concerned.
The old "all politics is local" adage is coming home to roost for a lot of moderate parents who might still lean toward broad Democrat platforms--though no longer at the expense of their children's well-being.
If the midterms wind up being a single-issue referendum for many of them, that could be a positive first step toward the un-politicization of covid.
Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.